The Internet of Things (IoT) era has finally arrived, and businesses need to be prepared for a world where everything is connected.

I'm an analyst so I'll support my proclamation that IoT is here with data: There are currently 25 billion internet-connected devices, and that will double by 2020 and then grow to 80 billion by 2025.

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However, there's a more basic way of understanding where we are in the adoption cycle: IoT has become the norm, not the exception, according to companies I talk to. IT and business leader no longer look at me like I have three eyes when I say, "IoT." In fact, in many conversations with them, the term IoT never comes up — yet they are connecting things. Companies are connecting more things because it makes their businesses run better, and over the next decade, this trend will accelerate.

Our tech panel looks at how Uber (secretly) handled last year's hack and the controversy around Google's decision to track Android users' locations. Then it's time to discuss why AWS is selling off hardware in China and what Mozilla is up to with its new Firefox Quantum.

With everything from massive data breaches at global organizations to explosive ransomware attacks that infect hundreds of thousands of users within days, it's well established that enterprises these days are dealing with more threats than ever before - all of which are increasing in abundance, frequency and complexity.

Among other things, this rapidly evolving threat environment can be attributed to new and expanding threat vectors that have opened the door for external threats to reach critical business assets via non-corporate entities, whether through a consumer device, poorly secured partner network or branch office. The Internet of Things (IoT) and guest tenant services, for example, force a unique method of segmenting the traffic service/workloads and introduce a level of operational complexity.

A solid backup policy and frequent awareness training can reduce the risk of ransomware, but unintentional breaches by insiders are still a worry for administrators. Watch as Steve Ragan and Michael Nadeau talk security strategy.

The Matrix Banker malware, first found in Latin America, is now gaining a foothold in diversified targets. Steve Ragan breaks down the threat with Justin Fier, director for cyber intelligence and analysis at Darktrace.

Doctors — particularly the ones that work in emergency rooms — need to have strong stomachs and level heads, since they see illness and injury at their most serious. Violence, accidents and serious diseases are all a matter of routine in the ER.

Dr. Christian Dameff is a faculty member at UC San Diego's medical school, has seen all of that and more, since he's also a white-hat hacker and expert in medical IoT security. He warned the audience on Thursday at the Security of Things USA convention in San Diego that the state of that security is, frankly, alarming.

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What's in store for the Internet of Things (IoT) in 2018? That's the question on many people's minds in the fast-growing IoT industry. One set of answers can be found in a new report from Forrester, called Predictions 2018: IoT Moves From Experimentation To Business Scale.

According to Forrester and published reports last week, that journey means many things, but apart from the usual superheated speculation about IoT's incredible growth and increasing impact, here's what I think is most interesting.